In the last blog post I mentioned how my mentor “talked me out of” table flipping and quitting. Let’s be clear I wasn’t quitting because I hate my job. I wanted to quit to pursue another passion. You are allowed multiple passions and interests in life. My other passion is bike riding and creating active healthier societies through urban planning.

So instead of quitting 3 months ago I created a facebook group called “Sydney Night Rides” (https://www.facebook.com/groups/sydneynightrides) to find and share the bike riding love with other sydney riders. The group has since grown from 3 (2 friends and myself) to 270 members. 6 of those members has become a great friends helping me organise and 1 has become a co-conspirator in growing the brand to something we can turn into a career.

Reflecting now there have been so many factors that have contributed to being able to grow a community, and funnily a lot has come from my role as a team lead, from working in a email marketing company where analytics is key to measuring success, and being a tech nerd with an understanding of various social media and techy platforms.

I can't believe I am past the halfway point of the mentoring program! Amlearning, growing and immensely enjoying every session I have had with Alan, mymentor. We have been meeting consistently every month and something moredepending on both our schedules - good thing here as we meet at a local coffeeshop (Whitehorse, in Sutherland) that has great coffee and a great vibe forchatting about 'stuff'.
Alanhas been the perfect match given his wealth of experience and knowledge aroundleadership, strategy, personal brand...the list goes on and the areas I havewanted to focus on. Our conversations have been broad and varied. Topics have gonefrom situational – “how should I have approached” through to brand, networkingand communications.
Forthis Blog installment I thought I would share some concepts:

The perception onion
You - how you see yourself at the core; to the outer layer of behaviour or how others see you.

4 months into the FITT mentor program and I’ve met my mentor 4 times and distress emailed her just once. The distress email I’ll get to but it starts with one of the first questions I answered when applying for the program. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Well let’s see what can happen in 5 years. Based on my history that could be a year in South Korea, a year in France, graduation from a Masters, and 2 years at Campaign Monitor.

Has it really been 2 years since I graduated from Urban Planning and joined Campaign Monitor. I initially joined on a part time basis thinking I’d be making a career change shortly. But after a promotion, a few interesting projects, working with a great team I soon found myself in “the comfort zone” and didn’t think much about that career change until 4 months ago.

Working on the 5 year plan and having a mentor who’s outside my company to bounce off the crazy ideas with was just the disrupt my mind needed. Together we’ve been looking at strategies...

Being the only female* in engineering at Campaign Monitor has its perks. Like getting your own room at the resort when your company takes the engineering team away on a retreat.
To be honest I didn’t even notice until another colleague pointed it out on the group photo (photo attached).
I don’t think I realised because I don’t find gender to be an issue at work.
So if I don’t have any gender issues why did I join the FITT’s mentoring program? A mentoring program specifically for women in IT?
I guess it’s mid-life crisis time. I’m working in an amazing company where my bosses are start up success stories who genuinely believe in a work-life-surf balance. I would love to use their life journey as a role model and really admire their values, but the reality is I’m not an entrepreneur and can’t really follow in their...

This is the first blog about my mentoring experience with FITT – this is the first time I have ever blogged and been part of a formal mentoring program. A time for firsts!
A year ago I moved into an IT role (Assurance and Compliance Manager) within the IT Security team, with no IT experience. It was an internal move and one that I glad I made. I am on an extremely steep learning curve, where no day is the same, and I have a supportive team and Manager who have helped me understand the IT Security lens, COBIT5, the IT technical complexity and generally been my coaches….Fortunately my background as an Environmental Engineer and worked predominately in the Oil and Gas industry (which is male dominated) for my entire career has helped as I have a strong focus on risk, compliance and assurance – just hasn’t been in the IT space. For me this is a new Career– exciting but daunting at the same time as I am now moving in different circles = new networks = limited at the moment. Joining FITT mentoring program for me was...